If there's one consistent piece of criticism that gets lobbed in Canonical's and Mark Shuttleworth's direction, it's that they do not contribute enough code - or anything else for that matter - to the Free software world. Mark Shuttleworth has apparently had enough, and has written a very, very lengthy blog post detailing how he feels about this criticism.

Sure, it's good to spread the code, nobody is saying that Canonical is doing a bad thing.

They are not part of the community, they don't contribute, they don't collaborate.

All the things they do are for self-interest.

I have been using Linux, for various purposes, since 1996. I have submitted plenty of bug reports, and all of them closed with "Won't Fix" by the developers. Since I don't contribute code, what you are saying is I am not a member of the Linux community. It wouldn;t surprise me if you are a developer that loves to just close known bugs with "Won't fix", failing to add that they are just too damn lazy to do so.

My point is that Linux developers are the ones generally doing things for "self-interest". There really is no "community" as you put it. Believe it or not, I use Linux every day, I just know better than to attempt to "contribute", as history has shown not to bother. I currently use Mandriva, so go ahead and slam me for that while you are at it saying it is not "Linux" and such.

I have been using Linux, for various purposes, since 1996. I have submitted plenty of bug reports, and all of them closed with "Won't Fix" by the developers. Since I don't contribute code, what you are saying is I am not a member of the Linux community. It wouldn;t surprise me if you are a developer that loves to just close known bugs with "Won't fix", failing to add that they are just too damn lazy to do so.

My point is that Linux developers are the ones generally doing things for "self-interest". There really is no "community" as you put it. Believe it or not, I use Linux every day, I just know better than to attempt to "contribute", as history has shown not to bother. I currently use Mandriva, so go ahead and slam me for that while you are at it saying it is not "Linux" and such.

I have the completely opposite experience: I've worked on several open-source projects over the years, and developers always try to fix problems caused by their previous patches. In addition developers tend to fix bugs reported by users in areas they are familiar with.

Just this morning, someone wrote the second patch for a GTK bug I reported and explained the problem on in detail. This patch fixes the bug. They probably got interested because I proposed a patch of my own and posted to the development mailing list which lots of people read, but still: I haven't ever found developers to be entirely self-serving and the community is real for me.

Show me to these bugs you reported that were closed "won't fix" and I'll see if I can fix them for you.

It all obviously depends on the project, I've never had any problem with e.g. xfce guys. They were willing to accept patches for things that, in their opinion, were not needed. Popular demand was enough to reshuffle their priorities.

OTOH, there are projects where user requests are outright rejected regardless of number of people asking for them. Important from usability point of view bugs are not fixed for years while most activity of developers is focused on rewriting existing layers and destabilizing perfectly functional code. These are not necessarily obscure projects, you'll find that at least several parts of your default desktop that fall into this category.

The solution is simple - avoid them or fork them. There is no point in talking to these guys as their vision is often entirely different from user expectations.

Here comes Ubuntu - whereas others simply put all these incompatible bits and pieces together, Ubuntu listens to user needs and tries to ship a single product that fits more mainstream vision of a desktop. There is no magic in it, just basic project management.

I have been using Linux, for various purposes, since 1996. I have submitted plenty of bug reports, and all of them closed with "Won't Fix" by the developers. Since I don't contribute code, what you are saying is I am not a member of the Linux community. It wouldn;t surprise me if you are a developer that loves to just close known bugs with "Won't fix", failing to add that they are just too damn lazy to do so.

You are contributing with what you can; giving feedback, so you are a member of the community. Maybe your feedback doesn't materialize in changes to other end-users, but at least you are trying.

Canonical isn't even trying, and they do have something more than bug reports to contribute; code. They have resources, they just don't want to share them.

And BTW, I am a developer, and most likely I've only closed 1% of my bugs as won't fix.

My point is that Linux developers are the ones generally doing things for "self-interest". There really is no "community" as you put it. Believe it or not, I use Linux every day, I just know better than to attempt to "contribute", as history has shown not to bother. I currently use Mandriva, so go ahead and slam me for that while you are at it saying it is not "Linux" and such.

Everyone does things for "self-interest", even people that give money to charities do it because it makes them feel good. The point here is that an evil Canonical would be doing exactly the same thing, unlike an evil RedHat, which would be doing, well, what Canonical is doing.

I have no problem with people using Canonical products; if it works for you, great. Just don't claim that Canonical is collaboration, because that's not true.

Really? Do they pay their designers and programmers for doing nothing? Do they have a not small staff which sits around and does nothing all day?

They have resources, they just don't want to share them.

Which is why they made a proprietary closed source solution nobody can learn anything from... right?

There is a lot more than the code those upstream projects provide. Even the glue that binds them together and exposes them to users without making them insane is highly valuable but, together with emphasis on UI design (and other areas that non computer enthusiasts focus on/feel are important), is often labelled as trivial "easy" work and this attitude is not helping the OSS world.